Image display devices such as liquid crystal displays, plasma displays, cathode ray tubes (CRTs) and electroluminescences (ELs) (hereinafter collectively referred to as “displays”) are being used in various fields such as TV and computer and their technologies are progressing rapidly. In particular, liquid crystal displays are enjoying remarkable growth as a thin, lightweight and versatile display medium for use with thin televisions (TVs), mobile phones, personal computers, digital cameras, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and various other devices.
When these displays are used in relatively bright locations such as outdoors and under fluorescent lamps, reflection of sunlight, fluorescent light and other external light on the display becomes a problem. As an antiglare treatment to prevent reflection of external light, generally irregularities are formed on the display surface to diffuse external light reflecting on the surface.
This antiglare treatment is embodied by means of roughening the display surface via sandblasting, etc., by means of coating the display surface with a clear resin and then forming a film having an irregular surface on top of the resin, or by means of coating the display surface with a coating material that consists of a resin binder and inorganic or organic clear fine particles dispersed in the binder, in order to provide an antiglare layer on the display surface.
Of these technologies, the last antiglare treatment using a resin binder and organic clear fine particles is currently used most widely, partly because external light can be effectively diffused by the irregularities comprised of fine particles and also by the differential refractive index between the resin binder and fine particles, and partly because this technology has the effect of widening the viewing angles—when used on liquid crystal displays that generally have a limited range of viewing angles because of their structure—by diffusing and emitting the image information output on the display at angles over a wider range. For example, this technology is presented in Patent Literatures 1 through 3.    Patent Literature 1: Specification of Patent No. 3314965    Patent Literature 2: Publication of Unexamined Patent Application No. Hei 5-162261    Patent Literature 3: Publication of Unexamined Patent Application No. Hei 7-181306